Tag Archives: citrus

The glycemic index of this blog has increased exponentially lately. I’ve been baking a lot, I realise – to relax, to energise, for fun. I promise I’ll move to savoury next, but for now, let me tell you about this bergamot polenta cake, for it’s sure worth a mention.

The paradigm from which this cake originates is not dissimilar from this other cake recipe I’ve shared a while ago. This, too, is a flourless cake (if we don’t count polenta as flour), and it has citrus as the primary accent within the flavour spectrum. And yet, the result is completely different, for no other reason than this cake uses the fruit in its entirety (as opposed to just zest and juice), which, of course, changes everything. Add this to the fact that the citrus in question is bergamot (easily one of the most aromatic fruits ever known to men), and you’ll have a cake that is at once seductive and surprisingly simple.

I spent two weeks at home in Veneto in late October and, in retrospect, it seems to me as if all I did was baking. I arrived the day after my birthday (I’ve officially entered the last year of my twenties) and kicked off all celebrations by firing off the oven. Then, a week later came Mum’s birthday, and with it came more cake. Nothing fancy, you see; nothing whose sight had people going ‘oooh, and ‘aah’, and take their phones out of their coat to snap a photo. No, nothing of the like. In both cases, all I produced was a rather unassuming number; minimal cake affairs that could come together easily, and with barely any washing up.

Practicalities aside, the truth is that neither Mum nor I have much of a sweet tooth. We like cakes, but multi-layer frosted cakes are very much lost on us. Our preference goes towards crumbly fruit tarts and rustic cakes that are possibly not too sugary. Which is why our birthday cakes often look just like any other cake we’d bake throughout the year…only, with sparklers on top.

Incidentally, both birthday cakes happened to have ground almonds at their core. One was an apple frangipane tart (more of which in a future post). The other (this one), a dense flourless white chocolate cake scented with citrus zest. That in both cases I reached out for the jar of almonds might as well be a coincidence. More likely, though, it’s a cake genre that just appeals to me and I’m instinctually drawn to. I might just as well blame it on my Venetian genes.

We have been settling into January at the slowest possible pace, trying to hold onto that feeling we brought back from Italy. Calm. Peace of mind. It didn’t last long – back to work and all that jazz – but we still managed to keep weekends on the resting side after all. There was a lot of sitting around, a lot of cookbook flipping, some reading and some walking. There was a lot of baking, too.

This cake is what we baked the most, by far. It’s nothing fancy, really, but it reminds me of the cake my mum used to make when I was little – that silly-easy cake (the only one she knew how to make, really) that takes a pot of yoghurt as a measuring unit. it’s a classic, but also, a cake that bears some uniqueness – in its aroma as much as in its backstory.